Better than I thought it would be.

The other day, The Firm with Tom Cruise, arrived in my mailbox from Netflix. This 1993 “thriller” is based on a book of the same name by John Grisham.

The movie was a lot better than I expected. (I have very low expectations these days.) It was about a newly graduated lawyer (Cruise) who accepts a too-good-to-be-true offer with a Memphis-based law firm. Unknown to Cruise’s character, the firm’s clients are the Chicago-based mafia. It appears that there’s no way out of the firm.

There’s lots of suspense that, in all honesty, is softened by the soundtrack. In other words, the music is all wrong. With the right music, certain scenes would have been a lot scarier than they were. Oddly enough, I’ve never picked up on this kind of problem before — it was just so darn obvious in this movie that even I couldn’t miss it.

It was interesting to see Tom Cruise so young again. It reminded me a little of his Risky Business days. The movie also features Gene Hackman, Hal Holbrook, Ed Harris, Holly Hunter, and Gary Busey (in a short-lived — pun intended — role).